So, here we are on our spiffy new weblog. MySpace blogs were too limiting for what we want to achieve. Also, the constant server outages and resource-hogging ads made it terribly unreliable and user-hostile.
So, here we go…
Best exchange ever:
“If you really loved me, you would prove it by marrying me.”
“And get the state to sanction our love? It would prove nothing.”
Helix is a new online quarterly scifi/spec journal with a gimmick. It’s completely donation-dependent. No subscriptions. No advertising. I put the over/under at 6 issues. Here’s why.
Reason One: Same as it ever was
Editor William Sanders, while well-connected in the sci-fi/spec community, writes in his first editorial:
“This magazine had its origins in a discussion among some of us disgruntled bastards concerning the present rather discouraging state of speculative fiction; and in particular the timidity and conservatism that seemed to be taking hold in the editorial offices of the SF magazines. Several of us had recently had the experience of having perfectly valid stories bounce merely because they were too “dark”, too unconventional — or, most disturbingly of all, too likely to offend somebody.”
Complaints about industry conformity, accusations of timidity, compromises of integrity. The standard indie press talking points are there (and there’s nothing wrong with that). However, is this really different than any other web journal that has come and gone?
This leads to the question: is righteous indignation enough to fuel a publication for more than a few issues?
Reason Two: Budget
As artistically pure and romantic as the notion of a donation-only publication sounds, it’s not going to work. Sure, there will be the friends and associates who donate money, perhaps even becoming long-term patrons. However, what happens when these patrons move on? What happens when you publish something that they don’t agree with?
Their slush pile is invite-only, and they do not actually pay for stories. Though some people crave the exposure, what happens when the authors can earn $0.08/word elsewhere with ten times more audience?
I hope it succeeds. But I doubt it.
NFG was a Canadian rag that had a formula similar to AntiMuse: unusual fiction, poetry and random hilarity. I first saw it at a Books-a-Million (we don’t have Borders or B&N here) next to the Kenyon Review back in January 2005.
I discovered today that NFG “went on hiatus” in July 2005, shortly after I bought the fifth issue. “On hiatus” usually means “out of cash” in this business.
It was a decent publication, although it did violate two of my rules in one issue: no talking animal stories and no second person present tense fiction. Still, it eminated an aura of ad hoc indy publishing that attracts so many to the small press.
I can always tell when an author has no idea how to write a female character. The story will always have an expository paragraph that goes something like this:
Then he saw her walk in the bar door. Her blonde hair cascaded over her bare shoulders, bouncing slightly with every step. Her hips swayed back and forth under a vinyl miniskirt. He wondered what type of underwear she wore–if she wore underwear at all. Her fleshy orbs threatened to escape the too-small halter top. He estimated them at a D-cup, and one seemed slightly off-level with the other, but he wouldn’t be sure until he broke out the Craftsman laser level–and maybe the table saw if he was feeling frisky.
What’s wrong with that block of reprehensible exposition? First off, Craftsman doesn’t even manufacture a laser level. Secondly, nothing in that paragraph is worth reading. The author could have simply said, “He was a normal heterosexual male in a bar,” and we could extrapolate every cliche possibility from there (if you extrapolated a priest/rabbi joke there, give yourself a hand).
Does this woman have a personality? Is she flirting with the patrons, or is she strictly there to drink? Does she slip off her wedding ring as she sits down in a group of guys? Does she have a penis? These are the questions you must ask.
In short, quit writing cardboard characters, even if they are busty blondes.
Just in case you’ve never stumbled across this list, here’s a massive catalog of sci-fi cliches.
Salon has a piece from an author who got negative reviews! It seems kind of whiney, but perhaps it holds some wisdom.
After four years of painstaking work my novel has gotten only two reviews, and they’re both bad. So begins my stages of grief.
It’s ungracious, of course, for authors to dispute bad reviews. Lofty silence is much more dignified. Let the readers decide. The trouble is, thanks to my two bad reviews, there will be no readers, or extremely few. I don’t have that many relatives.
I agree with you in spirit, vicious hipster kids. Of course MTVs programming is vapid and retarded. Of course it’s incredibly depressing that the market has supported their ride down the slippery slope of Herculean atrocities against brain cells. But if I had a way to use that colossus to my own ends… I’d do it without batting an eye. And keep on going.
I’m not just pulling a Lewis Black here. You want to call MTVs programming vapid? Make Something Better. I know you can do it. But you’re going to have to sweat blood. It’s easier to throw stones.
…
I want to get my work out there to people, and eat at the end of the day. I’d shoot myself in the face if I was driving an Aston Martin with $30,000 spark plugs, but I’m sipping on a pretty good 2004 Riesling right now, and I prefer it to Pabst Blue Ribbon, thank you very much.
I’ll piss some people off with this.
Nick Mamatas, one of my favorite authors, has long been an advocate of getting paid for your writing work (note: potentially inflammatory link), which makes perfect sense to me.
If I put in 20 - 40 hours writing and revising a story, a simple “Hey, that’s a neat story, Michael,” won’t suffice. I’d want the money. I can use money. I can buy things with money, like more printer paper or ink cartridges, things that increase my productivity so people can further enjoy or deride my work. Exposure is fine, but what purpose does it serve? Seems like there are easier ways to get an ego stroking than writing short stories.
However, here in the small press world, there’s a tendency to adopt a “money = PURE EVIL” attitude. Somehow, not getting paid is seen as sticking it to The Man. In reality, there is no Man trying to keep you down, only the sum of your efforts.
It’s easy to believe your work is too revolutionary or underground. It’s easy to blame the publishing industry or the mainstream or any other collective scapegoats. However, going back to Mamatas, his first novel was a Beat road adventure coupled with the Cthulhu mythos in which Kerouac and Burroughs save the world from a demonic cult. I don’t think it gets less mainstream than that. And, yes, he was paid a nice sum.
There’s a difference between being too revolutionary to get paid and being too mediocre to get paid. All creative types have work that they’d rather forget about. I certainly have many pieces that I’d prefer to set aflame, but at the time, they seemed good. That’s why every writing guide suggests setting aside the work for several days/weeks/months.
If you never want to make a dime from writing, then great. I respect your belief. However, perhaps you owe it to yourself and your work to make a few bucks. Don’t you deserve it?
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